Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Organize your recipes

This little project is something I've been meaning to do for a while now. With the baby coming very soon, I've been more motivated than ever to organize every last thing in my house! This method is nothing ground-breaking, but it makes me feel so much better knowing my recipes are all in order and easy to find when I need them!

Before I did this, I used a cute little recipe box to store all of my recipes.

This worked pretty well for me until I accumulated too many recipes, especially ones that I had printed from blogs online or torn out of magazines. The page sizes were just too big to fit into this little box, and I certainly didn't want to copy them onto recipe cards....way too time consuming!

I bought a few inexpensive supplies:

A binder, divider tabs and clear protective sleeves.

I sorted my recipes into 3 different categories:

1. Ones that were on 8x11 paper.

2. Ones that were on recipe cards, with writing on only one side of the card.

3. Ones that were on recipe cards and had writing on both sides of the card.

For the recipes on 8x11 paper, I just slipped those into the protective sleeves. For those on cards with writing only on one side, I just taped them onto plain white paper and stuck those in a sleeve as well. For the cards with writing on both sides, I made a photo copy of the back of the card. When someone gives me a handwritten recipe, I really like to keep it exactly the way they gave it to me in their own writing...I'm just sentimental like that!

Then, I taped the front of the card above the copied area so that my whole recipe was just on one page.

I labeled my tabs with categories that were pretty much identical to those in my old recipe box. I just eliminated a few categories I wasn't using.

I also slipped the divider tabs into the clear protective sheets so that all of my pages were even with each other. I had to cut small slits in the sleeves to allow for the tab to come through. I just used a snap off knife for this.

Lola wanted to help too!

So, that's about it! Very easy! Now all of my recipes are perfectly organized and protected.

I finished the front of the binder by adding some damask scrapbook paper and I made a little label with my name.

Do you have a recipe binder? How do you store and organize your recipes? Let me know in the comments!

About Me

Living my dream of being a stay-at-home mom in Northern Virginia with my wonderful husband, our little girl, and our Chihuahua. I love being a mom, decorating, crafting, thrifting, diy-ing just about anything, antiquing, sewing, finding a good deal, refinishing furniture, hosting parties, and just creating! Stick around to see all of these things, and glimpses into our everyday life, too! Welcome! I hope you'll stick around!